


what universe of rapture?

by Adenil



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: AU Where Vulcans Developed Warp Capabilities Late, Alternate Universe, Lots of Burned Things, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Romulans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 15:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11164833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adenil/pseuds/Adenil
Summary: The night the end of the world rained down upon his ears Leonard was sleeping fitfully on a cot in the break room.





	what universe of rapture?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally a [tumblr prompt](http://adenil-umano.tumblr.com/post/161676477775/spones-with-spocks-vulcan-lyre) that got out of hand: spones with Spock's vulcan lyre?
> 
> ETA: p.s. next week I'm doing a [Spones Fic Drive ](http://adenil-umano.tumblr.com/post/161436337250/adenils-cup-o-spones-fic-writing-drive-what-a).

The night the end of the world rained down upon his ears Leonard was sleeping fitfully on a cot in the break room.

It began first with sirens. Long accustomed to hearing the comings and goings of emergency vehicles Leonard paid no mind until the first detonation struck. It shook the building and he tumbled from bed, half-asleep. Dust collected in his hair at the second detonation.

He went to his patients because he had nowhere else to go. He stood over them, comforted them, protected them, and then finally when the hospital began to shake and fill with smoke he wheeled them out one after another after another. People who were more than just their broken bones, stitched bellies, bandaged heads. Who were more than the crying of panic and the screams of terror. He went back in. He came out with an old woman who fell to the ground beside a young man with a broken leg. They could not have met previously, yet they clung to one another with a fervent need. The building burned and his lungs filled with black smoke. He went back in. He came out. He went back in.

He did not come out.

Later, much later, when running made his lungs scream in agony he would blame this smoke.

He awoke the morning after the end of his world to cool hands on his forehead. A damp cloth. A pool of water at the corner of his eye. The hands brushed hesitantly over the soft skin lidding his eye, wiping away the smoke residue that still clung there.

Leonard was too weak to move and so he lay there, listening. He could hear the figure moving. The cloth plunged in water. The torrential downpour as it was wrung clean. Then the shuffling movement and the hesitant breathing of his savior.

He opened his eyes.

The other man was not human. He was Romulan, as far as Leonard could tell. He’d only ever seen pictures of them--grainy and blurry at bad angles. But the ears. The ears told the story. The man merely looked at him and said nothing.

He closed his eyes again and thought, _I’m going to die_.

His second breach of consciousness on the disturbingly sunny afternoon of that first day of the new broken world was quite different.

The Romulan made him sit up and drink a cup of water. “Did you nurse me back to health just so you could poison me?”

The Romulan arched an eyebrow. “It is no poison. If I wished for you to die there would be more logical ways to accomplish such a goal.”

Leonard had to agree and so he sipped from the tin camping cup. Now that he was semi-vertical he could look around at where he’d found himself and he didn’t like what he saw.

They were in a hollowed-out shell of a burnt building. At first Leonard assumed it was the hospital, but the look of it was all wrong. This was a house, he realized, a house which must have burned far longer ago than last night. The roof was caved in and at certain points Leonard could see plants and grass poking through the soot layering the ground. A stream of sunlight fell through the slotted beams of the roof and Leonard had the sudden thought that somewhere in the galaxy people were happy. Somewhere someone was getting married, or singing, or dancing. But not here.

“What is this place?”

The Romulan looked about as if he had never noticed the building before. “My home.”

“Uh-huh. What are you, Romulan? Some kind of leftover from the attack? We must have gotten a few shots back at your armada.”

“I am certain Earth’s defenses did indeed return fire, but it is unlikely they were successful in destroying even a fraction of the armada. Regardless, I am not a Romulan.”

“Those things you call ears beg to differ.”

He reached up and touched one. “I understand your error. I am a Vulcan.”

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“We are an insular species. We do not have your warp capability. Now, rest.” He pushed Leonard back to lying down. “I will explain everything later.”

Leonard wanted to argue but he was already exhausted and winded from just their brief conversation. He told himself he wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t let his guard down, and he was still telling himself that when he woke later up that evening.

Spock was his name. He gave Leonard that much, but his promise to explain everything never materialized.

“We must leave this place,” Spock said. “Romulan foot soldiers are sweeping the area.”

“Now wait a minute! I’m not going anywhere until you get to explaining what’s going on.”

“I do not know why the Romulans chose this moment to break the treaty.” Spock was packing a backpack with his supplies: a first aid kit, camping pots and pans, a stove, some food packs, a sleeping bag. “If you are referring to how I brought you here, I went to the hospital to seek medical aid. When the strike hit I was there.”

“Medical aid? Are you hurt?” In spite of himself, Leonard scanned Spock for any sign of injury. He couldn’t see anything, but who could tell with a Romulan--or a Vulcan, if that’s what he wanted to call himself.

“I am not. The need for a doctor has passed. Now please, we must leave.”

Leonard could tell Spock was about to leave without him and so he scrambled to his feet. Spock shouldered the backpack and then picked up another large black plastic case and swung it over his shoulder. Leonard wasn’t sure what was inside it, but it must have been important judging by the way Spock protectively curled one arm around it.

They ducked through the broken door frame and Leonard squinted in the half-light of the moon. They were in the woods. He didn’t really know the surrounding landscape of the city, but he knew that the woods were pretty far off. There was a dilapidated car in the driveway and Spock began to fill it with gasoline from a red container. And to the left of that was—

Leonard blinked. Fresh dirt, recently overturned. Perhaps five feet of soil. Someone was buried there.

The person formerly needing a doctor? Or something more insidious? And how had they died, anyway?

He was starting to grow more uncomfortable with the situation but he didn’t know what else to do but follow Spock into the car. There was a war on and he didn’t know where he was. He had no food and just his grimey, stinky scrubs between him and the elements. He basically had to follow Spock if he wanted to stay alive. He would keep an eye out for escape, but for now he couldn’t risk just running.

Car gassed, they loaded up, and it took Spock three tries to get the engine to turn over. The world had moved on to shuttlecars decades ago but the streets were still passable if you drove slow. At least, Leonard thought, the Romulans probably wouldn’t be looking for cars.

Spock took them into the night. He rolled down the windows so the air fluttered in, drying out Leonard’s eyes and leaving him cranky. But he could tell Spock was listening with those long ears of his; listening for foot soldiers or passing airships. Maybe Spock was a defector, Leonard thought. Or maybe it was a trap.

He trailed his fingers through the passing air outside the car, letting the wind catch the palm of his hand. Leonard thought of the fins of a shuttlecar and wondered when Earth’s counterattack would begin. He hadn’t seen anything yet.

They drove until the sun peeked above the horizon and then Spock drove the car into the ditch. The two of them piled tree branches over it. It wouldn’t fool a foot soldier, but from the air they were camouflaged. Then Spock started a fire in his camping stove and rehydrated some eggs.

Leonard watched Spock eat first and wondered if Romulans could be poisoned as easily as humans. But he was hungry, and so far Spock hadn’t tried to harm him. He decided to eat, tucking away with haste once he had his first taste. He hadn’t eaten in almost two days, he realized. He was starving.

“Tell me why you were at the hospital.”

Spock looked at him, and then away. “As I told you, I was seeking medical assistance.”

“Someone died.”

“Yes.”

Spock wouldn’t say anything more. When Leonard pressed him he merely got up and crawled into the back of the car. He lay down on the seat and held the black plastic case against his chest. Leonard left him alone.

He tried to walk away but there was no where to go. They were deep in the middle of nowhere. Once he saw a vehicle pass overhead and he thought about waving to it, but instead he hid. Better the devil he knew, he thought. He walked back to the car and napped fitfully in the front seat. He wondered if the old woman had gotten away. He thought about Jocelyn and Joanna, three states away. He wondered if Spock would take him there if he asked.

When Spock woke up he did ask. Spock didn’t answer, but Leonard was pretty sure they started heading a different direction once night fell.

When they crossed state lines they got their first radio signal.

Leonard hadn’t even realized the radio was on. It must have been dialed too low for him to hear. But suddenly Spock pulled over to the side of the road and turned up the knob and a grainy voice filtered in.

“--vivors recommended to take to the countryside. There are better chances of survival there. If you’re caught in a city and someone says they have heard of an evacuation plan _do not_ listen. Repeat: do _not_ follow anyone who claims there is an official evacuation. There has been no official word from the Federation or Starfleet regarding evacuation. Rumors of evacuation may be a Romulan plot intended to—”

Spock pulled back onto the road and they listened to the dire report on constant repeat until the voice faded out again, some three hundred miles later.

“Maybe he was lying,” Leonard said, mostly to himself.

“It is possible.”

Leonard turned to look at Spock’s profile, sharp and distinct in the darkness. Spock drove without lights and claimed his vision was superior. Leonard hoped to hell he didn’t drive them right into an ambush. “You’d know, wouldn’t you?”

“As I have said I am not Romulan.”

“Then why do you look exactly like them?”

Spock was quiet for so long that Leonard thought he’d gone mute again. But then, “I do not know.”

They left it at that.

They crossed into Georgia just as the sun rose and had to quickly find a spot to make camp. They parked the car behind a burnt-out farmhouse and hoped no Romulans came to check that the job was done.

Leonard was afraid to look inside the house but he couldn’t stop staring at it. “What do they want with us?”

“Slaves, most likely. Romulans are not known for colonizing even conquered planets.”

Leonard spun around. “You shut your mouth!”

Spock blinked. “You asked, Doctor.”

“We aren’t conquered, you son of a bitch!”

Spock winced bodily. “Your people are dead.”

Leonard swung at him. Spock barely dodged, but the second swing didn’t come as much of a surprise to him. He caught Leonard’s arm and twisted it, and Leonard screamed in his face, cursed at him, tried to bite him. He tried to kick Spock and Spock knocked his legs out from under him and they went down in a tangle of limbs. They scuffled in the dirt until Spock had him pinned to the ground and Leonard realized he was sobbing.

Spock held him tightly, but they were no longer fighting. “I know,” he said. “ _Nam'uh hayal. Ni'droi'ik nar-tor, tushah nash-veh k'odu, ni'droi'ik nar-tor._ ”

Leonard didn’t understand what was happening. He sobbed into Spock’s shirt as Spock rocked him, muttering into his hair those alien words again and again.

_Tushah nash-veh k'odu. Ni'droi'ik nar-tor._

He awoke later in the backseat of the car. He cracked open his eyes and saw Spock sitting in the passenger’s seat, the black plastic case on his lap. Spock ran his hands over the cracked plastic, long fingers catching on the indentations. Leonard closed his eyes again, exhausted. He slept.

They had not seen an air vehicle since the one Leonard had spotted their first night on the run. Leonard thought this was a good sign. Spock told him that the Romulans had likely taken all the slaves they could and would leave the rest of Earth to pick up the pieces so that they might return later, perhaps in one hundred years or so.

Leonard was too tired to argue.

When they arrived in Atlanta Leonard refused to let himself hope. The road here was less passable, and it took Spock several hours to pick his way around the city to the suburban sprawl just on the other side. There Leonard realized he was a fool. He had let himself hope.

There was nothing for them there. Not a person in sight. No signs of human life. Each identical house stood empty, hollowed out. They parked beside Jocelyn’s house and Leonard stepped out of the car. His feet carried him automatically up the walk. The door was ajar.

He stepped inside. “Jocelyn? Joanna?”

Silence.

He searched the house with Spock trailing behind him like a damned shadow. Joanna’s room was like a snapshot in time. As though she’d just stepped out to see her friends. The bed was unmade. There was an open textbook on her desk. On the wall was a poster of that ustart Commander Kirk that was always making the news. Leonard had hoped that meant she’d pursue a career in Starfleet someday; more likely, it was because fourteen-year-olds thought space travel was romantic.

He tore the poster off the wall. His heart thudded against his chest as he shredded it, fingernails digging against plaster, and then he stared in horror at what he’d done. He’d destroyed Joanna’s poster. She loved that poster.

Leonard was suddenly outside, heaving into the bushes. He felt a hand on the back of his neck, soft fingers gently rubbing. Soothing him. He gasped for breath and sobbed as Spock curled around him, holding him and rocking him. Weak, Leonard turned into him and held back as hard as he could. The touch was violent; he would have hurt Spock if he could. But Spock was impervious to his anger.

Spock lead him to one of the deck chairs and helped him sit down. Softly, Spock brushed his hair from his face. His touch lingered as though he were crudely checking Leonard’s temperature.

“I’m a mess,” Leonard said.

Spock tilted his head to one side, quizzical. “I am sorry they are not here.”

Leonard gasped. He sucked in a deep breath. “I-I don’t know what to do.”

“I will get you some water. I will be back in less than a minute.”

Leonard watched him go, counting the seconds until he’d need to start panicking. The counting distracted him just enough that the gaping darkness inside him close for a brief moment.

Spock returned in fifty seconds.

He had his backpack and his plastic case. He set both down and rooted through the backpack, coming up with a bottle of water and a tin cup. He offered it to Leonard and Leonard guzzled it in one long swallow.

Leonard swiped at his face with his sleeve. “Spock, I need you to tell me something.”

Spock tipped his head to the side again as though he needed to focus all his energy into listening. “Yes?”

“What’s in that case?”

Slowly, Spock turned and looked at it. He was always carrying that damn thing around like he was terrified of losing it, but now he seemed terrified that it _existed._  His eyes were wide with concern. He didn’t say anything.

“Don’t close up on me,” Leonard begged. “Please, Spock. Not now.”

A moment of deafening silence, then another, and then Spock shook himself. He pulled the case over and opened it.

It was an instrument.

Spock didn’t take it out of the case. Leonard reached out and touched the strings, his pinky catching against one and drawing out one haunting vibration. The note hung in the air for longer than seemed possible. An echo.

“Do you play?”

“Not anymore.” Spock closed the case decisively. “It was my mother who always encouraged me.”

“Is she…” Leonard trailed off, unable to complete his sentence. He didn’t need to. The look on Spock’s face told him enough. He reached out and took Spock’s hand. Spock was hot to the touch. “I’m sorry.”

“As am I.”

Leonard swallowed heavily. “We should… Can we get out of here?”

Spock nodded. They gathered up their things and packed up the car. Spock disappeared into the house and came out again carrying several bottles of water and a bag filled with canned food. Leonard didn’t have the energy to protest that Jocelyn and Joanna might need that. He just watched Spock place them in the trunk and slam the door shut.

The pulled back onto the road and Leonard let his arm trail out of the car, fingers dancing through the air. He looked up at the starry night sky and wondered if there was anyone up there having a good day.

He hoped so. He closed his eyes, and slept.


End file.
